Aspect Enterprise Increases Coverage and Client Base
I spoke with the Director of Sales for EMEA for Aspect Enterprise (AES), Yags Savania, this morning to get an update on the company. AES is a leading provider of E/CTRM solutions delivered as Software as a Service (SaaS) with a historical focus on oil traders. “Historical” is a well chosen word because AES is expanding its coverage among energy commodities and beyond delivering metals, coal and other TRM functionality for its AspectTRM product and several existing clients. Additionally, the company really has traction signing at least one new client a month for its TRM solutions at the moment.
Aspect TradeFlo is its entry level product for oil trading. It covers trade capture and risk management for physical and derivative oil instruments but can be delivered very quickly and cost effectively on a SaaS basis. Many Aspect TradeFlo users eventually upgrade to the standard AspectTRM platform to gain back office functionality too. Savania told me that AspectTRM can be ‘implemented’ in as little as 2-3 weeks and is very cost effective with pricing based on a per user subscription model.
I asked about customization. After all, everyone has different requirements at the detailed level right? AES will provide customized versions of AspectTRM (Enterprise version). Essentially, the base product is customized specifically for a particular client and made available to that client via SaaS or hosted basis (locally or remotely). It is in this area that AES is expanding into other commodities as Enterprise clients who like the software and delivery model ask for customizations to encompass other commodities such as Coal and Metals. AES ‘productize’ customizations right from the start, says Savania.
One undoubted advantage AES has over most other vendors is that the software was developed on utlra modern technologies from day one. While many vendors are now migrating slowly but surely to SOA and JAVA etc., AES is already there and able to take advantage of the rapid development that that enables.
The SaaS delivery model for CTRM software seems to be growing – albeit for certain industry segments and geographies such as Commercial and Industrial end users, hedge funds and smaller trading shops where the economics make a great deal of sense. Indications from the data already collected from our SaaS survey seems to suggest around 25% of the respondents would now consider SaaS-based CTRM solutions and on completion of this ongoing study, we will have much more data on which to base likely trends and projections.
If you’d like to take our SaaS survey please do so before June 15th, 2010 here.
